Author: TechBrunch

While lawmakers in most countries are still debating how to put guardrails around artificial intelligence, the European Union is ahead of the curve by passing a risk-based framework to regulate AI apps earlier this year. The law came into force in August, but the details of the pan-EU AI governance regime are still being worked out. For example, a code of practice is being developed. But the compliance countdown has already begun and is ticking as the law's gradual provisions begin to apply to makers of AI apps and models over the coming months and years. The next challenge is…

David Carandish is a busy man. His support automation company, Capacity, was planning a $5 million “bridge round” to help the company reach breakeven. But TVC Capital, Toloka.vc and the venture's other backers had grander plans in mind. So they put in another $21 million in Capacity's $26 million Series D. While all this was happening, Capacity acquired three companies: enterprise search company Lucy (which raised $5.6 million) and two startups focused on customer service automation, Linc and Envision. “Capacity is in an exciting period of transformation as we grow to help brands automate interactions with their customers and team…

From Switzerland's Founderful to Italian Founders Fund and Dutch Operator Fund, European VC startups claim to operate as “entrepreneurs supporting entrepreneurs.” It may be too early to call it a trend, but Swedish fund Node.vc has joined the group, raising €71 million to expand into startups in the Nordic and Baltic countries. “We hope this is the start of a trend,” Node.vc Managing Partner John Elvesjö told TechCrunch. “Europe lags far behind the US in terms of operating experience for VC investors…There is a lot of marketing about founder-led and operator experience, but if you scratch the surface, typically It's…

Storio is a French startup focused on providing smart energy storage to commercial and industrial customers. The startup, founded in 2023, raised a seed round of 5 million euros (about $5.5 million at current exchange rates) earlier this year and signed its first customer. Storio believes that solar panels have a bright future. But the company also wants all solar panels to include batteries to optimize production. Its target customers are other businesses that may not feel they have the time or expertise to participate in all these technical parts themselves. Instead of manufacturing or selling standalone batteries, Storio has…

Dane Stuckey, former CISO at analytics company Palantir, joins OpenAI as its newest CISO, alongside Matt Knight, OpenAI's head of security. Stuckey announced the move in a post on X Tuesday night. “Security is closely tied to OpenAI’s mission,” he said. “To protect the hundreds of millions of users of our products, ensure democratic institutions can fully benefit from these technologies, and advance the development of secure AGI for the world, we must Meeting the highest standards of security is important. I'm excited about this next chapter and can't wait to help realize a future where AI benefits us all.”…

Pear VC is a prominent pre-seed and seed-focused venture firm that has been running accelerators with about 10 startups in each batch for about 10 years. Over the years, this small but mighty program has led to companies like Viz.ai (valued at $1.2 billion in 2022), which allows FDA-approved AI to diagnose stroke, and Relationships, which raised $80 million in Series C. He has helped launch numerous companies, including management company Affinity. Valar Labs, valued at $620 million, according to PitchBook data, uses AI to help doctors make cancer treatment decisions. (We closed a $22 million Series A in May.)…

At Tesla's highly publicized robotaxis launch event last week, CEO Elon Musk announced that Tesla plans to introduce some Model 3 and Model Y vehicles in Texas and California in 2025. He said he expects to release an “unsupervised” version of FSD, the company's advanced driver assistance system. He also said that by 2026 or 2027, Tesla will begin producing robotaxis, which are made without steering wheels or pedals. The deployment of both unsupervised FSDs and robotaxis built without human control raises regulatory concerns, although there are skepticism about Musk's ability to stick to the schedule. Let's break this down.…

In just over two weeks, TechCrunch will bring some of the startup world's leading companies to San Francisco's Disrupt. But our partners provide more than just financial support. Their presence at Disrupt provides startups at all stages with the tools, knowledge, and community they need to succeed. Thank you to Meta for supporting our special invite-only cocktail reception. When you receive your invitation to “Women in Tech(Crunch),” all of TechCrunch's female staff will be waiting for you. Dropbox DocSend hosts the breakout sessions and is one of the Startup Battlefield sponsors, along with JP Morgan. Thank you for your enthusiastic…

Meta's X rival Threads is rolling out a new “activity status” feature that lets you see when someone on your social network is online. Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced the feature in a thread post on Tuesday, saying the feature is intended to serve as a “helpful way to find people to interact with in real time.” . Thankfully, you can turn off the setting and only users who have this feature turned on will be able to see that you're online. Since its launch last year, Threads has lagged behind X (formerly Twitter) in surfacing real-time events and trends.…

Alert management to developers and operations teams may seem like a solved problem. After all, notifying an on-call engineer is no longer that difficult. But the real question is when to alert the right people and how to help them, for example if a service goes down. Many, including Keep, are turning to AI to solve some of these problems. The company offers an open source version that uses a rules-based system, but more interestingly, it has a paid enterprise product that uses AI models to reduce notification fatigue by deduplicating and correlating alerts. is. The Y Combinator-backed company, which…